An Art Work A Day

I am sorry I have not been able to get a good photo of this acrylic painting of mine.




















Some days I feel like I struggle dragging myself through steep mountains. Today was such a day. As some of you know I struggle regularly with my sleep and I have had such a week now and I did not sleep a wink last night. I felt OK then and even tidied up a basement room, BUT during the day I fell down, had way little muscle strength and felt real ill. Being severly sleep deprived IS horrible so cross your fingers for me for tonight and the nights to come. I will probably sleep tonight because I am that tired.

I was happy that my son drove most of the time today because my eyes were often like Mr Bean's when he need match sticks to keep them open. We spent almost all day getting all kinds of materials. We had a big problem finding the right roof ladder and went from shop to shop in the two nearest towns.

BUT :-)))) As you can see, nearly one half of the roof is now done. All those panels on each end will also be changed.


My son ( 18) had a bunch of friends over tonight so I took a walk to a nabour for a while. walking home the sky was beautiful.

Finally today I managed to find time to paint a bit. It seems like I am in a very monochrome, simplefied expressive, figurative nearly feministic phase. LOL that was quite a few words for what probably looks very simplistic at first glance.

I do hope it will create many thoughts in you seeing it. That is what I hope for. I would love comments on what you thought. I am very unsure of how close up I want to frame it to be. I find it to provoke different thoughts in me when I get her closer than in the distant one.

Yes it is Sunday and we are supposed to rest, but we definately did not. At last the sun won the battle nad the rain stopped. We have been working like mad on the roof today and will start early tomorrow too. I do not know what I would have done had the rain not stopped - at least for a while. I do not trust the weather at all this summer. We do need to stop doing whetever we're doing so that the climatic changes can be somewhat reduced.

I have a mountainous area at the back of my house and today I cleaned it up a bit to make the rock show better through. I do love the texture and patterns within rocks.

Here is my carpenter helper in the hole in the roof. I was so happy when all that was rotten was exchanged with fresh materials. And the next photo is when the first row of new roof came up today. Boy was I happy.

I have also had a few helpers putting up the support and doing the washing at the top. You can also see here parts of the wooden walls that had to be changed.

I chose to call this work " Twisted Roads of the Heart" BUT I always prefer my viewer to feel free to see what THEY see and not be limited by the title.

I really need to find some time to show you all the work being done here properly. Today we painted the the waterpipes? ( takerenner) on the house black. These are 60 years old ones which we scraped and scrubbed and cleaned yesterday. At first I had planned to get new ones but a friend said they were very well made as an old handicraft and could serve me better than cheap new ones once cleaned and restored properly. So after a think that is what I went for.

Don't they look good? Of course I'll do a second layer but for now they are protected when we start taking off the old roof stones. As you can see - it was time.

After we finished today I realized that we had some spare bengalack so I painted the old rusty double ladder in the middle. It turned out great. Pity it is not mine hehe, but anyway it is nice to return this borrowed one looking nice.

I have also been very fortunate in that my now retired boss has kindly lent me his car hanger when I have needed it to fetch materials or drive away rubbish. That hanger has faily old wheels and I plan to do something about that instead of buying him flowers or similar to express my gratitude. Here my son and I are nearly done emptying this hanger.

It is hard work we're doing these days and together with my excesses at the gym, I am on my way to reaching my first goals, weight- and fitnesswise which I had for the summer. :-)))))

In th evening I went to the gym, spent 65 min with fairly high incline and speed on the treadmill, 30 min on the rowing machine and 4x12x 95kg in the leg press machine. I'll probably become a bit sore tomorrow.

I guess you can see where I got the inspiration tonight. Definately not my favourite exercise.

After that I went to a collegue to get a washing done. My washer has something wrong with the electronics and I can not get a repairman in before all the materials stacked near it is removed due to it always becoming wet when they start to open up washers.

Both chili and paprika has the same basic shape. These days Red Paprika even comes in elonged shape like Chili pepper.

This is me playing with chinese brush painting style using watercolours on watercolour paper in miniature size. 1.5x3.5in for those of you not familiar with Artist Trading Cards.

Today I spent most day continuing the extreme decluttering of my living room. Now as I sit here there are almost only the sofas and the tv cupboard left. The rest are empty shells waiting to be carried away. Then hopefully I will find the energy to paint the walls.

Tomorrow morning my son and I plan to drive to town to buy a few things for the house qand the car and the bicycle he LOL hopes I will use the next year so that he can have the car permanently. The car does look good and WOWWWWW the sound system is fantastic. ( It should be - he have worked I think 50 hours on it)

Rabbit, Snake, Chick, Donkey and Tiny Bird

I have not been feeling well all day - something might be brewing, therefore no painting today either.

I did however drive to the nearest town in the early morning and bought the new roof sheets. I also drooled over new windows, doors and floor parketts.

Fortunately, with the help of good friends I do believe I will be able to restrain myself hehe.

I really hope to be back tomorrow with a proper painting.

Today I started by being very annoyed because we had to wait untill a non specific time to get the chainsaw man to come. I ended up very annoyed because we could not get any contact and without that I could not rent the machine to grind up the branches or split the wood for firewood afterwards - in short everything kind of stopped while all had to wait for this one man and one chain saw which we never knew when would arrive. I was simply an inch from just buying my own saw. I do have both the protective trousers and booth from my younger days. hehe (of course this was just the last drop and triggered the anger - usually it takes lots more.)

Well in the end I had to do something to get rid of this anger filing me up so LOL I spent an hour or so furiously digging up this old potato area in my garden - by hand meaning me and a spade and lots of anger. I even deweeded it. I will use this plot as a temporarily storing place for plants that will have to be moved to survive when the big diggers and containers and builders scaffolding starts arriving.









Friday, as I wrote then we had some help from expert woodworkers from the electricity dep who took down some trees that could have damaged the lines or the house if felled wrongly. Here are two of them. The debranching and cutting and cleaning up we had to do ourselves.

And after lots of hard work today by several persons, this is part of the wood that we ended up with which we'll split tomorrow and stack to dry so that it will keep me warm a winter to come.

Here is also part of the stack of branches that I will rent a grinder for tomorrow. It became quite huge in the end.

Today my painting time disappeared because of a call from the police. Someone had found the corpse or if you like sceleton of my son's stolen moped. The rest of today went by fetching it and realted things. It was a sad sad sight. My son had really worked on it both layout design and engine. Of course there is the financial loss ( insurance never pays all and only listed value not incresed value.) but worse was that we now know that someone locally did it and that it probably will be a young person both I as a teacher knows well and it might be someone my son has been on friendly terms with. All in all I feel quite unwell thinking about it.

Today we have had the electricity expert lumberjack visiting. You know those men that cut down the very difficult trees that might fall over the lines and similar. The result; I now have felled trees all over my garden. I became totally impressed, I had this huge birch which could have fallen on top of my house and broke the roof. They went away from it and only with a tiny stick he picked up from the ground he said "oh no, it won't hit the hedge, it will come to about here. I swear the top tip landed nearly on the same inch he had indicated and that tree was tall.

Tomorrow will be a day of debranching and cutting them up and I hope to borrow or rent a machine that cuts brances into small sticks which can be used in flowerbeds to avoid weeds. All in all a very noisy day tomorrow.

In the evening and at night tomorrow thee will be lots of music because the BIG Summer Dance is tomorrow close by. LOl I can join without leaving my own house. Earlier they will probably practice a bit so tomorrow will also be lots of music.

The painting I am posting today is one I did last month. I really hope I will get some real oil or acrylic painting done tomorrow but maybe there will not be enough peace before Sunday.

Today I have been really fed up with the rain, It is so annoying when we try to work on the house. Also I now feel I need the warmt and light of the sun to cheer me up. Some of you may have noticed that I paint best when I have been energised a bit by the sun LOL.
No feeling of holidays either when the weather is like this. I do try however to be very grateful that I do not have any problems with flooding as many have.

Tonight for an hour a nabour and I went snail hunting. The Iberiea snail has arrived here in numbers so a little before dark we walk around picking them up - a very delicate job (NOT) but one that has to be done.

Tomorrow the weather forecast is a bit drier and I really hope that it is right. I do need two things to function properly the coming weekend and be positive nad productive and that is sun and sleep which ahs been a serious problem lately. Last night I gave up and spendt a couple of hours sorting through drawers and papers. Today has not been good.

I have so much I want to paint but I simply am not in the mood for outdoor painting in the rain. I hope to be a bit more cheerful tomorrow.





ACEO ATC 07-07-07 Raddishes

watercolour,
SOLD

These days what is most prominent in the news are the rain and flooding and possible landslides. Fortunately that is not a problem where I live, but I must admit the continuing rain is kind of annoying. Today we had to stop the work on the house and if the weather is as wet again tomorrow we will take a break and wait for drier weather.

What I am proud of though is that whenever the rain stops or at least is very weak for a while, then I am out and about walking and watching nature. Today I became kind of mesmerized by the very special greens outside now. Probably due to all this rain and at the same time fairly warm weather. If only the rain will take a bit of a break then I will be out with my easel and paints trying to capture some of it, painting plein air.

Today "Playing in the Seaweeds" left home and is on its way to Florida USA where I am sure it will get a good life. I was a bit unsure about the packing so to be sure, I got my son to cut a panel board as support and I kept putting more bubble wrap on corners etc etc. Hopefully it will arrive safely ( 4-7 days with this A priority mail according to the post office). So do not hesitate because of the distance - I always send quickest mail meaning any painting normally should arrive within the week.

This ink painting on shuen paper A5 size is inspired by pattersn of roots on the path where I walked today.

Lately I have been walking in the forest a lot and I can feel it "talking" to my soul. It is now midnight and I recently returned from a walk among trees that turned very mytical as the darkness fell. This painting in ink on shuen paper is one of a series I want to make, trying to capture some of that magic in the forest.

I show you it in a mount simply because I think it makes it come out better.

size of paper is A5. Below you can see a photo of the wonderful pattern on the path that inspired me.

I hope you like to see me using different mediums so try to pass on what I as an artist see.

Today has been a calm day. I went to the gym, enjoyed my strawberries with my bran flakes when I returned, I visited some friends and I went murdersnail hunting with a nabour. My son returned home after a trip and that was nice. My daughter had permission to be away today because her boyfriend leaves tomorrow dor a holiday abroad with his family.

I am very happy right now because I just received a pruchase enquiry from Florida for "Playing in the Seaweeds". That one turned out very popular. My daughters flatmate also fell for that one.

This aubergine as well as the other fruits and vegs are part of me practicing chinese brush painting tachniques by using Jane Dwights instructions. This one I really liked because it was a nice "lesson" to really see how many interesting shades one can create by the right loading of the brush.

This painting as well as the one posted yesterday was done in the oriental brush stroke style.

ACEO ATC 07-07-02 Yellow Plums

I do not yet get to paint as much as I believed I would this week but sometimes LOL I end up painting something I did not expect to paint. This is a soundbox my son is working on for our car. Inside of this box there are several channels where the air can go. When just putting a tiny pc speaker inside we can hear a tremndous difference. I can not imagine the sound when he puts in huuuuuge bass elements etc. LOL it will really be something for Mum to cruise in hehehe.

Most of this box will be covered with fabric both inside and on the outside.

Well, anyway, the elements have some red parts and he also wants to buy some red lights. th result was that quite a few hours was spent painting shapes somewhat flamelike. I did not want the biker kind of flames, more like organic shapes so that is why I have posted first a painting of red flames and now a painting of blue flames on black. My son obviously wanted to see some demos of how it could look done in acrylics so here are the painting of blue flames and below is the box.

Flames

acrylics on canvas board 30x40cm

$100 p&p worldwide included

Sorry about the parts of the Easel showing. This one was painted as an inspiraiton from my son and our discussion on a project he has been working on. I'll post images of it another day here in the blog.